Tube drivers’ unions ASLEF and RMT are balloting their driver members for industrial action after it emerged that train testing workers could be asked to test driverless trains as early as this month.
Introducing driverless trains, which are already on place on the Docklands Light Railway, is a key plank of transport bosses’ and City Hall’s plan to radically reshape the Tube network – along with plans to cut maintenance, close ticket offices, further de-staff stations and restructure service control. It is a measure that will allow them both to cut costs and significantly weaken the unions. The immense risk posed to passenger safety is, for them, acceptable collateral.
The ASLEF ballot has already concluded, and returned a 90%+ vote in favour of action. RMT is balloting both for action short of a strike (i.e. a refusal to test driverless trains) and for strikes, in an attempt to prevent an anticipated employers’ injunction on the basis that a refusal to work on driverless trains constitutes a wholesale withdrawal of labour, and therefore a strike rather than an action short of a strike.
This skirmish over the testing of driverless trains is likely to be a shot across the bows from both sides, and it appears that London Underground management are already backing away from the testing plan, blaming Tube Lines and its signalling upgrades contractor Thales.
TubeLines workers themselves are reviving their battle for pensions and travel pass equality. The workers, who provide essential maintenance and engineering work on a number of London Underground lines, will resume their action with a 60-hour overtime ban commencing on Friday 5 October at 5.30pm. RMT leaders have visited workplaces and addressed ad hoc mass meetings, as well as convening reps’ meetings to discuss the next steps in the dispute. Tube Lines workers understand that at stake is not just their membership of one of the best pension schemes around (the TfL scheme), but the future of the company — behind the scenes, bosses and politicians are discussing whether to fully re-integrate Tube Lines’ work into the publicly-owned London Underground, to re-privatise it, or to cobble together a hybrid of the two.
Ultimately, workers’ ability to halt bosses’ plans for the Tube depends on their strength of organisation in the workplace and their ability to win their unions to positive strategies for reshaping the transport system on a basis that puts workers’ and passengers’ needs first.
The resumption of action by Tube Lines workers, and the momentum created by mobilising around the driverless trains ballot, should be used to engage rank-and-file workers in discussions around this strategy.
Only if workers feel that they own and can direct a positive, offensive strategy — rather than being treated like a stage army by union bureaucrats and mobilised largely in defensive, reactive struggles — will they have the confidence to take the action necessary to beat the bosses.
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